Unzipped: An Urban Erotic Tale (13 page)

“Yo, Diamond is dead,” the dude calling Pearl’s cell phone had said flatly. Immediately, Cole had gotten swole and sought to protect Pearl. From the devastating news about her sister, and from the ass-clocking muhfuckah delivering that shit.

“Shawty caught a bad one,” the dude went on. “They holding her body at the county morgue. They had to ID her through
dental records, man, ’cause there wasn’t enough of her left to get a fingerprint from to find out who she was.”

There was a long pause on the line, and Cole saw no reason to fill it, ’cause even though he felt real sorry for Diamond, Pearl was his baby. He wanted her on her feet living life, not wrecked out and crying all day in no bed. Pearl had told him all about this slimy cat Menace and how he had been fucking Diamond over the years. Fuck this niggah! Cole was strictly out for Pearl. Let this punk on the line look out for the twin he had been jocking for.

“They said she was all fucked up, man,” Menace said finally. “But even in her bad condition they could tell she had broken bones all in her neck … some niggah musta strangled her or something … somebody’s gonna have to go claim her body so she can be buried. I guess Pearl needs to know that.”

Cole smirked. “Why the fuck do Pearl need to know?”

“What?”

“I said, why Pearl gotta know? She’s already pressed the fuck out. She don’t need no more bad news.”

“Man, what the fuck is you talking about? That’s her
sister
layin’ in the morgue dead, yo! Her fuckin’
twin!
They pops raised them to be tight, niggah! To look out for each other! Hell yeah she needs to know!”

Cole just shrugged. He gave a damn about all that. “Yo,” he told Menace, “you was boning Diamond right? Sliding up in that? Then you go take care of her body. Handle that shit. I’m fuckin’ Pearl, and I’ma make sure
my
baby is straight.”

Pearl! Pearl!

Wake up, Pearl! Stay with us, baby!

It was almost as bad as her nightmare, the pain and confusion
that had suddenly gripped her. She was shaken violently, her face slapped by large, rough hands. From a great distance she imagined she heard Cole yelling, then talking to someone frantically, begging them for help.

She was lifted and jostled. Then she was stretched out flat and being bumped along, moving fast. Hands dug deep into her stomach, pressing toward her backbone, and a sharp-tasting liquid was forced down her throat.

Pearl gagged and fought back, but she was weak.

There were lots of people above her. Loud voices. Sharp commands and murmured words of concern.

She tried to turn over on her side. Wanted to sleep. They flipped her onto her back again and jammed a tube up her nose. It scraped the back of her throat and snaked down into her stomach. Cold liquid whooshed quickly through the tube and flooded her insides. The sound of suction assaulted her ears. Pearl choked as she tried to cry out. She couldn’t catch her breath.

She was so tired. Just wanted to sleep. Forever.
Forever!

Pearl!
Pearl!

Cold fingers lifted her eyelids.

Bright lights pierced her brain. Her stomach lurched and she gagged, spewing up the foul-tasting liquid they’d forced into her belly.

There were so many people around, so many voices floating within her fog, but one voice in particular Pearl heard loud and clear.

Why?
a woman asked with deep concern in her voice.

Pearl opened her eyes to the blurry image of an elderly white nurse leaning over her. She had a full head of gray hair and eyes that crinkled in the corners.

Why would such a beautiful young woman do something like this to herself?
the lady wanted to know.

Cole’s deep voice washed over Pearl as he answered.

She lost her whole family and she’s been sad
, he said.
She’s hurting. It’s hard on her … she’s grieving so bad till I guess she just don’t wanna live no more …

Through her haze, Pearl watched as the old white nurse leaned over her again. Somewhere in the background little Sasha cried out for her mother, and Pearl squeezed her eyes closed tightly and willed her soul to fly free from her body.

When Pearl opened her eyes again, it wasn’t the old nurse whose face floated above her.

It was the face of her dead father.

It was that old street niggah Irish Baines, who once upon a time had handled the most vicious of gangstas in a brutal fashion. Irish gazed down at his daughter as she lay on that hospital gurney, racked with grief and trying her best to join her family in death and he told her, “I know it hurts, but you gotta be strong, Daddy’s Pearl. I don’t want you to be sad no more, you hear me?” Pearl listened intently to her father, and the words firing from his mouth caused her to become straight-up unzipped.

“Daddy wants you to get
mad
now, baby. Daddy wants you to get
even
!”

P
earl had endured a lot during her hospital stay. She’d been admitted to the psych ward and placed on suicide watch for almost two weeks. After being forced to take antidepressants and sit through endless hours of nuthouse counseling, by the time Pearl was discharged she had developed a new sense of purpose, an objective, and a plan.

Getting rid of Cole had been harder than faking out her psychiatrists. Shaking that clingy niggah off was like trying to kick a tribe of fleas out of a pissy carpet. Carlita had been right about him. Cole was possessive and controlling, and the only thing he gave a damn about was keeping Pearl right next to him so that the next man couldn’t get close to her.

“You need to chill with all that packing,” he had told her as she tossed a few items of clothes into a suitcase. He had followed Pearl to her apartment even though she’d told him she wanted to go home alone. Pearl ignored him and kept on packing. She
didn’t know why she was bothering to take most of her stuff anyway. She had paid her rent up for the next two months and she was gonna need a whole new wardrobe for the kind of role she was about to play.

“You got a damn good job here, Pearl,” Cole went on. “You got people here who care about you. Even Carlita thinks you should stay here!”

Pearl nodded. Carlita
did
want her to stay in D.C. But Carlita had also done everything within her power to make sure that Pearl would be safe and successful when she left. Carlita had used her security clearance to help Pearl access a file on another New York family who had been killed in a crime that was almost identical to hers, and had done countless other things to help her. So, while Carlita
wanted
Pearl to stay, she understood why her young friend had to go.

“Just holla if something heavy goes down,” Carlita had told her. “If you need help kickin’ ass I’ll jet to Harlem in a blink, girl. Me and Zoe are both ready to get strapped and get it started.”

Carlita and Zoe were true friends and they were gonna support Pearl regardless, through thick and thin. But Cole’s selfish ass had kept the heat on at his end.

“Yo, Pearl. All that ‘I gotta get away and find myself’ bullshit sounds real suspect to me. You ain’t never been
lost
, baby. Your life is right here.
I’m
right here. This is where you belong.”

Pearl was grateful to Cole for standing by her side and holding her up through the funerals and stuff, but gratitude wasn’t gonna stop her from doing what she had to do. Wasn’t nothing in the world gonna stop her from accomplishing the mission that was in front of her, but there was no way to break that down for Cole in terms that would make him understand it.

“This ain’t about you or a job or the FBI, Cole. It’s about me. I already told you that a thousand times.”

“But you ain’t really telling me much of nothing!” he exploded. “Why don’t you try telling me exactly what the fuck I’ve been asking you, Pearl! Where are you going? Who are you gonna be with? Why can’t I come with you? How fuckin’ long are you gonna be gone?”

Pearl scooped up a row of expensive toiletries and perfumes off her dresser and dumped them into a plastic carry bag. She kept her back turned to Cole as she placed her few good pieces of jewelry into a satin travel pouch, then hesitated briefly before sliding Cole’s icy engagement ring off her finger and setting it on top of the bare dresser.

Pearl sighed and refused to answer him. It was Cole’s fault she was leaving anyway. She had been laying in bed beside him as he watched SportsCenter on Sunday night when it hit her. A plan for retribution had rang out in her head just as clear as a bell, and she had Cole to thank for hooking her up with all the important details.

“Aw, man!” Cole had said as the SportsCenter announcers cut to a commercial break. Cole was drinking a beer and shaking his head at something being said on the screen. “Patrick Ewing is hosting a Summer Jam Basketball Classic at the Garden. That’s the kinda shit I miss about New York,” Cole complained. “Every fuckin’ thing that’s hot happens in New York in the summertime. I ain’t bitching or nothing. D.C. is working for me and I got you here, but New York is the place to be. LeBron is about to suit up for the Knicks, and Pat’s name is still ringing big bells. The Classic is a major draw. Every high roller in the country is gonna be swarming on the city that weekend. Hell, forget about the game. The pregame and after-game parties alone are gonna be off the chain.”

Pearl had been laying there, listless and uninterested, but suddenly her ears perked up and her curiosity was stoked.

“What you know about the after parties and all that, Cole? What kind of high rollers go to summer basketball games?”

“Yo, girl, my father was a hoop star before he was a politician, remember? I grew up around all kinds of professional sporting events. It ain’t just about the game, Pearl. It’s about the
business
of the game. The whole atmosphere. The shine. The tricks, the drugs, the betting, point shaving, and game throwing. Nigs be ballin’! There’s a whole underworld of activity going on at major events like these. The Bureau keeps moles on the job trying to tamp that shit down. But it’s hard to infiltrate those circles because the criminal elements are loyal and they grind it like they live it. To the bone.”

Pearl had nodded, and then sat up straight in the bed, listening to him intently.

Ever since her suicide attempt she had been haunted. Not simply by her family’s murder as she once was, but by what her father commanded her to do from the depths of his cold, smoke-filled grave.

Get them muthafuckahs back, Pearl!
Irish begged her each night in her dreams.
Don’t get mad, Daddy’s Pearl. Get even!

And with her father’s voice urging her on in her head, Pearl stayed quiet and listened as Cole painted a colorful picture of a three-day ballin’ extravaganza complete with big money rollers, sex, drugs, gambling, and some of the slickest hustlers and kingpins in the nation. It sounded like a real good time to Pearl, the kind of place where sleazy muthafuckahs like the men who had deaded her family in cold blood would fit right in.

Less than forty-eight hours later she was in her apartment packing her shit and Cole was damn near crying.

“You still ain’t answered me, Pearl. Where you going, girl? And why you gotta leave? Shit is perfect for us here.
Why?”

Pearl finally turned around to face him. The only person she
had trusted with any details of her plan was Carlita, and Pearl hadn’t even told her everything, just enough to gain her support. Carlita hadn’t liked the thought of Pearl placing herself in danger. She thought Pearl should let the authorities do what they did best.

“Let the New York police take a crack at it, Pearl,” Carlita had pleaded. “I know they don’t give a damn about most black and brown people, but you should at least let them try. If they can’t find those bastards in the next few weeks then I’ll roll up in Harlem with you and help you swole some heads. But give the police the opportunity to at least look.”

Of course, Pearl wasn’t trying to hear that. What she needed Carlita to do was help her gain access to FBI resources that could make her mission a success. Because of her seniority and experience Carlita’s security clearance was much higher than Pearl’s, and there were documents that she needed her girl to access on her behalf, and weaponry items she needed to order using Carlita’s clearance code.

And just like Pearl had expected, her girl had been down for her 100 percent. Carlita understood how it felt to lose someone you loved, but even the loss of her husband didn’t compare to the horrific murder of Pearl’s entire family. After finding out some of the dirty details of what had been done to Pearl’s family in their last minutes on earth, Carlita had promised to help her friend anyway she could.

Which was why Pearl couldn’t understand why Cole couldn’t give her that same kind of love and respect. His whole attitude was about me, me, me. Like a spoiled fuckin’ two-year-old who was about to fall out because he couldn’t get what he wanted.

Pearl kept her voice calm and low when she spoke to him, and there was real sadness in her tone.

“I don’t have a whole lotta answers for you right now, Cole. I
could make something up, but I’m not trying to lie to you. I could bullshit you and say I’m heading east or north or south, but how would it matter? I’m outta D.C., Cole. That’s what’s real. And I don’t know when I’ll be back.”